RELATIONSHIP OF ADVERTISING APPEALS, CORPORATE REPUTATION AND BRAND ADVOCACY: THE MEDIATION ROLE OF BRAND LOYALTY

Background: Retention of customers to maintain long term profitable relationship is indispensable for the organizations operating in Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs) sector. Due to lucrative nature of market, proximity of new entrants is very high in emerging FMCGs markets. In order to retain customers for longer time and make them loyal with the brand, companies are spending heavily on advertising campaigns. Informative and normative advertising appeals are two widely used appeals in FMCGs advertisements. This research aims at finding the degree of relationship of informative and normative ad appeals with brand loyalty in FMCGs context. Efforts have been put to understand the relationship of three very important variables; corporate reputation, brand loyalty and brand advocacy in FMCGs sector.

Methods: Data were collected using questionnaire with the sample size of 400 from four different cities of Pakistan. Regression analysis was conducted to find the relationships between variables. Firstly, all were measured independently with each other, and then mediating effect of brand loyalty on the relationship between corporate reputation and brand advocacy was measured.

Results: The results revealed that informative advertising appeal has created more impact on brand loyalty than normative advertising appeal in FMCGs sector. On the other hand, findings also suggest that corporate reputation and brand loyalty are important but not the major contributor towards the brand advocacy in FMCGs sector.

Conclusions: The research has great significance for marketing professionals and practitioners as it would guide them about strategic direction for the use of appropriate appeals in advertising campaigns.